Quantum computing’s reproducibility crisis: Majorana fermions
Experiments to find Majorana signals are performed by loading a nanowire into a dilution refrigerator capable of cooling it down to close to absolute zero.Credit: HGA Architects and Engineers
A shadow has fallen over the race to detect a new type of quantum particle, the Majorana fermion, that could power quantum computers. As someone who works in this area, I’ve become concerned that, after a series of false starts, a significant fraction of the Majorana field is fooling itself. Several key experiments claiming to have detected Majorana particles, initially considered as breakthroughs, have not been confirmed. One recent case ended in a high-profile retraction from Nature (see Nature 591, 354–355; 2021), which I initiated with my colleague Vincent Mourik, a physicist at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia. We raised...
